Tucson Oddity: Star on pole reminds some of a long-gone drugstore

A replica of a 1-year-old woolly mammoth named Tunguska stands
at the Arizona Geological Survey Map and Bookstore.

Some commercial properties change names and tenants so fast that
it's hard to keep up. What is a clothing store one day might be a
vacuum cleaner repair shop the next.

But for many longtime Tucsonans, the building on the northeast
corner of East Fifth Street and North Craycroft Road will always be
known as Star Drug.

It's now the home of a civil and structural engineering firm.
But for more than 40 years, the 10,000-square-foot building was
part of a local chain of drugstores that popped up throughout
Tucson between 1953 and 1986.

Of those stores, however, Star Drug might have been the most
well-known because of its trademark star perched on a pole on the
roof next to its drive-through window.

"That was probably Bob Jensen's idea," retired pharmacist Marty
Ronstadt said about one of the co-owners of Defender Drug Stores,
of which Star Drug was a part. "He was a very innovative guy."

The star is still there, as is the drive-through bay and a
marquee sign on the corner that marks the location of the long-gone
Burcham Plaza, which that shopping center was once called.

"We like having that star up there," said Marcia Grenier,
co-owner of Grenier Engineering, which has occupied the building
since 2007. "It's like a landmark. We've had offers from people
wanting to buy it, but we've said, 'No thanks.' "

Jensen, according to his obituary that ran in the Arizona Daily
Star in 2002, and partner Lyle Crandall at one time owned nine
stores in the Defender chain. The two men eventually sold the
stores in 1987 to SupeRX Drug Co., which eventually passed the
stores on to other owners.

Star Drug's location was last a pharmacy in the early 2000s,
when it was an Osco, according to city business records. That
drugstore eventually moved a few miles west to Fifth Street and
Alvernon Way, where it is now a CVS.

Grenier said the building housed a thrift store before she and
her husband bought it in November 2006.

Despite the changes, she said, some people still stop by looking
for the medical equipment that Star Drug was known for. "I remember
one guy," Grenier said, "came in looking for a wheelchair."